1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a recording medium loading apparatus, and in particular to a disc loading apparatus for detachably loading a disc in a recording and/or reproducing apparatus, compatible for either of a mini disc (referred to as, "MD" hereinafter) and a compact disc (referred to as "CD" hereinafter) or the like, serving as a data recording medium for music, video, code data, and the like.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Conventionally, CD and MD have been popularly used as an optical disc data recording medium mainly for recording and reproducing music and the like data. In recent years, a digital video disc (DVD) has been also developed as an optical disc data recording medium capable of easily recording data thereon. With the development of these discs, many types of disc loading apparatuses for use in recording and/or reproducing apparatuses have been also proposed heretofore. The following describes an example of a conventional disc loading apparatus with reference to FIG. 12.
In this type of a conventional disc loading apparatus shown in FIG. 12, when a disc is to be transferred from a play position in a disc-clamping condition to a loading position in a disc-unclamping condition, a tray 103 carrying the disc is first raised vertically and detached from a drive unit 102 and a control unit 101 by link members 107a through 107d and parallel links 108a and 108b, and subsequently the tray 103 is horizontally transferred outward by a roller 109 and a spring 106.
In this conventional construction, the tray is moved both in the vertical direction and in the horizontal direction to take out the disc, that is, the moving operation of the tray is required to be switched-between the vertical and horizontal directions. Moreover, since the operation in each direction is a parallel movement of components, guide members for guiding the tray should be strictly-defined in order to smoothly move the tray, which results in increment of the moving distance of the tray in amount as a whole. Therefore, it is difficult to drive the tray merely by the spring. In other words, a motor is needed to drive the tray. Eventually, the number of parts of the loading apparatus is undesirably increased and the structure thereof becomes complicated. The above fact results in increasing the size and weight of the apparatus as well as increasing the cost, contradictory to the current tendency towards simple construction with low-cost and compact size.